


One day

by goodoldfashionedvillain



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, M/M, No superheroes, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-18 06:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2337959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodoldfashionedvillain/pseuds/goodoldfashionedvillain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day Bucky Barnes goes to war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Louise de la Valliere](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Louise+de+la+Valliere).
  * A translation of [Однажды](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/74429) by Louise de la Valliere. 



> From the author: This fic was written under the influence of the "Atonement" and these soundtracks:  
> Dario Marianelli - Denouement  
> Dario Marianelli - Cottage On The Beach

One day Bucky Barnes goes to war.  
The draft notice comes in June; June - a stifling heat at the day, and terrible thunderstorms at night, god knows what happens to the weather, well, god knows what happens to the world, and everyone seems to have forgotten how to be surprised about it.  
The draft notice comes in June; Bucky comes home earlier than he's supposed to - their director lets them go before the end of the shift, and Bucky even has some time to go to an art store and calculate that he can buy a present for Steve's birthday - a huge set of paints with the unimaginable number of colors - after another week of work.  
Bucky comes home, thinking that today he can meet Steve at editorial office and go for a stream; he can't remember the last time they were just walking around - together - and now it's possible, late into the night even - tomorrow is a day off, so they don't have to work. He thinks of it on the way home, when opens a mailbox, when goes up the stairs, when enters the apartment, and then, when he finds a white envelope with a stamp among the newspapers, all his thoughts are knocked out - only his heart is pounding convulsively in his temples. He knows what kind of envelope it is: Mickey from the apartment floor below got one of those the other day, and everyone could hear his mother terribly crying that night; he knows and hopes to the last breath that he's wrong, but he sees the straight ruthless lines on a piece of paper that dropped out of the envelope.  
He has to come to the recruiting office in three days.  
Bucky hides the letter into his coat pocket in a closet, and doesn't say anything about it neither this evening nor the next two.

_

When he comes to the office instead of the docks, and got asked "Well, son, ready to fight a good fight?", he suddenly realizes that he isn't really ready. He doesn't want to. He realizes only now what is going to happen, and he doesn't want to go to war. Steve wants to, he's thirsty for it, he dreams of it and wishes to punish all those who started this massacre, and god save those doctors who don't give him a permission to join the army over and over again. And Bucky - Bucky doesn't want to fight and he doesn't want to kill anyone. Even more he doesn't want to be killed. As if anyone really asked him. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557. He has seven days till the shipping, they say and hand him his uniform. He got an appointment to 107th unit. What an irony.  
Once he's home, instead of hiding his uniform - Steve mustn't find it, Bucky still hasn't told him, though Steve has a right to know - he opens it, puts it on, slowly pushing the brand new shiny buttons of his jacket in the tight loops.  
He looks in the mirror, and he looks sick and a little lost; and his uniform feels weird, somehow not right, like from someone else's castoff, and he wants to rip it off, it chokes him.  
Bucky looks in the mirror and he wants to break it.

_  
During dinner Steve opens a newspaper that he brought: regular reports from the front, loss and lists, where people are afraid to find a familiar name; next to him lays his enlistment form - a rejection, again, "4F" that saves his life, he doesn't ask for it, he can't sit here while people are dying, he has to be there, why the hell do they decide everything without his opinion, he says with fervor and almost darts off in the end. And suddenly Bucky can't withstand it.  
"Enough", he says, leaning forward, his hands on a table, "Enough that I am going to war, and you have to stay here".  
"What?", Steve asks after a pause with a pale face.  
"I enlisted", Bucky says, oh god, why is he lying, damn it, he can't understand it himself, "107th", and before Steve manages to open his mouth he adds "Shipping out on Monday".  
Silence - a tinkling and brittle as ice in early spring - is delayed, and then Steve gets up from the table and says firmly:  
"I should be going. With you".  
Bucky shakes his head. "You should stay", he sees how Steve, turning to the window, helplessly squeezes his hands into fists; and, after a pause, walks over to him and hugs him from behind. "You should stay", he repeats and kisses the top of Steve's head, presses his cheek against the soft light hair. "Someone has to wait,back home. It's a good omen".

That night, losing himself in hot touching, in ragged, hasty movements, in darkened up to blackness blue eyes, Bucky thinks that Steve clings to him - by kissing, pressing tight, with his whole body - with a sort of desperate determination.  
Bucky clings to Steve exactly the same way.  
In the morning he wakes up from a nightmare, which he doesn't remember.

_  
The day Bucky leaves, Steve is terribly, hopelessly late. He had to stay at work for two more hours, and now he has to go not home, as they agreed, but to the station, and he runs so that the heart jumps out. Damn the editor, and author, who wasn't satisfied with an illustration to the third chapter, Steve thinks bitterly, gasping for air. His lungs tighten, chest begins to burn, not from dust hanging in the hot haze of June - at the thought that he may not make it.  
He manages to get there in time by some miracle; by the same miracle he almost immediately finds a familiar figure in the crowd. Bucky stands on the platform with his hands in his pockets, and every now and then looks up at the station clock. Seven minutes till departure. Steve pushes through the crowd and loudly calls him.  
Farewell turns out a bit awkward and crumpled, train whistle is loud and shrill, such that lays the ears; Bucky glances at the train and frantically turns to Steve, leans for a hug, claps his shoulder. And he smiles, stepping back, and that smile even seems like the real one, his old smile, that Steve almost forgot for this week.  
"Write me", Bucky says.  
"Don't you dare go to a medical board", Bucky says  
"Don't forget to meet me here when I get back", Bucky says.  
"Win the war as soon as you can", Steve responses, "Or else, I'm afraid, I may forget".  
His words are lost in the polyphonic noise, muffled with a whistle, a wagon beside them starts to move, and Bucky - sergeant James Barnes - swearing, rushes to the door, jumps on the bandwagon and turns around the last time before disappearing into the depths of the wagon.  
Steve watches the train for a long time, in the end this big and unwieldy thing blurs for some reason and fades on the horizon.

_  
Of course, Steve goes to a medical board. Another attempt, the sixth in a row, but it's a sin to not take the opportunity - one of the new recruitment offices located two blocks away from the house, he can go there after work, why not, if it's open till late and is on his way home. This time, he is, for a change - Steven Grant Rogers from Brooklyn. Inspection doesn't take long, less than the list of all of his ailments: asthma, scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, and so much more, that it's easier to say, which sickness he doesn't have. Doctor, a stern elderly man with a military bearing, looks at him through the glasses with a confusion, shakes his head and looks into the medical record. Steve is waiting for him to put another «4F» on the sheet, but the doctor, frowning, puts down the documents and gets up from the table, saying, "Wait here."  
"What's the matter?" immediately asks Steve, and he feels uneasy: there are results of all the medical examinations in the folder, and if today he is Steve Rogers from Brooklyn, then a week ago he was Steve Rogers of Paramus, and last month - from Ohio.  
"Wait", repeats the doctor and goes out of the office, turning to the right. Steve recalls that there are two policemen at the entrance, and damn, damn, damn, falsification of personal data is illegal, and it seems that he screwed up pretty big this time. Bucky had warned him, how good it would be if he'll get caught now. He looks around: he can't leave the office, but the window is open, and it's the first floor, and, in fact, he has no choice, so he grabs a folder from the desk, his jacket, climbes over the sill, just like he was - in unbuttoned shirt, and he runs almost all the way - two blocks. At home, he can't catch his breath, and his heart is pounding like crazy, and Steve feels like he has an attack.

_  
The first letter from Bucky comes in three weeks; he tells how they were sent to some camp for training for a month, and then they will go to Europe, but he can't tell more, it's a military secret, after all, come on, he writes, better tell me how's it going at home, how's the editorial office, it got cold here, the July, for god sake, I hope you don't sit by the window in the evening, you don't need your asthma to get worse.  
"Everything is fine, I managed to cook scrambled eggs for breakfast without burning them, and now I won't starve to death while you're not here", Steve writes.  
"We have finished our work on that novel, well, you remember, there were a lot of pictures, we even managed to do it before the deadline, and I got a decent pay", Steve writes.  
"I had an attack only once and it wasn't that bad", Steve writes, and, of course, he doesn't say anything about the circumstances that led to it.  
They exchange only six letters - post doesn't work really good, especially as their unit constantly moves: from the training camp to England, from England to Italy, and then the letter, that Steve sends in January, is left without any response.  
In January in Italy starts a battle that will last for several months.

_  
That night Bucky can't sleep: a bitter cold, and a thin blanket that doesn't really save him from it, and an anxiety, and nothing can save him from this. He smokes - he began to smoke pretty quick here, but he didn't tell that to Steve - and coughs when a caustic cheap tobacco scrapes his throat, just like the first time. When the cigarette ends, he is about to write to Steve: he has a small piece of paper and a pencil stub, so small that he can barely hold it in his freezing fingers, and Bucky somehow manages to write two lines and puts it all back in his pocket, trying to warm his hands with his breath. He returns to his place, tightly wraps up in a blanket, and then he finally manages to fall asleep - for an hour or two, no more.  
At dawn they wake up in a hurry - to start another attack. It lasts for almost two days; two days of an endless battle, endless cold and endless bloodshed. Bucky's hands are shaking from a deadly fatigue, his eyes hurt from a constant tension. He rubs his face with a free hand, then raises his rifle to his shoulder again, ready to join in a continuous and terribly familiar din of battle once again, and at this very moment he suddenly stuns.  
A projectile explodes very close, just a few steps away, and Bucky doesn't have time to escape, to rebound, to do anything, and the explosion knocks him to the cold, firm ground. The darkness before his eyes dissipates for a moment, and at this moment, right before losing consciousness, he feels terrible pain that scrapes through his body.  
He wakes up in the darkness, silence, and - again - in pain, and then a hoarse, unpleasant sound breaks the silence; at first Bucky doesn't understand that it's his own voice. With all that pain he understands almost nothing, and notices a movement beside him only when someone gently puts a hand on his shoulder.  
"There, there, sergeant", whispers that someone, the whisper is familiar, and Bucky recalls: it's Dugan. "Hold on, buddy, you all will be taken soon, you hear me, they will take you to hospital, all of you, just hold on".  
Bucky wants to tell him that he's hurt, and he wants to call someone - he can't remember who, he doesn't know, god, he doesn't know anything, and it hurts, everything hurts so much - but not a word escapes from his throat, just ragged moans that he can't even hear. Bucky shakes from the pain and cold, and he's fumbling, completely crumpling an artless bed underneath. Dugan soothingly pats him on the shoulder and gently covers him with a coat lying next to him, and then heavy, wheezing breathing is aligned - Bucky finally calms down.  
Dugan stays with him all night, and waking up when it begins to get light, he's about to go for a nurse or a doctor, to find someone, after all, the commander promised to send the injured to hospital. Except that sergeant Barnes doesn't need anything already. Sergeant Barnes has a peaceful face - very young, very pale, and absolutely dead face. His left arm - what is left of it - is enmeshed in bandages, blackened from blood; in stiffened fingers of the right hand, not completely disengaging from his bosom, is a squeezed photo. On a black-and-white picture is a hundred times more sun and happiness than in this damned colorful reality, and Dugan barely audible sighs, glancing at it.  
Later, when they try to get the photo from the fingers, clenched with a death grip, a bottom corner breaks away.

_  
When the military units begin to return to Brooklyn, Steve gets a habit to go to a station every day. He may be there for hours, looking from behind the backs, looking out into the crowd for a familiar tousled top, staring at the faces; thousand of faces, and they merge into one, and he can't find the one that he needs. Bucky is nowhere here, he's not even in the wagons with the wounded, and Steve stubbornly continues to look for him. Every day.  
But one morning he doesn't appear at the station, because he finds a letter in the mailbox. Envelope is yellowish, of thick paper - like one of those, that Bucky has sent to him, and in the first moment Steve tries to calm down the heart that is beating wildly with a joy. And then he notices a strange, sprawling, confident handwriting, a small mistake in the address, and the absence of the recipient's name.  
The first thing that comes out of the envelope is a familiar photo, it's made about a year ago, but the corners are already pretty frayed, and one of them, a lower right, is missing, another person must be having it. Steve frowns, looking at the picture, and his fingers suddenly feel strange burr on the back, he turns the picture around and sees a dried red-brown stain. He throws the photo on the table and hurries to get a piece of paper so much, that the envelope is torn beneath his fingers.  
The author of the letter is the corporal Timothy Dugan, and he apologizes for the absence of a name. In fact, he has no idea to whom he writes, he hardly managed to get an address, but he considers it his duty to send a photo to this address, that was left to him after the death of James Barnes: his family will need it more than he, Dugan, will. Lines that James was a good man and a brave soldier, Steve doesn't see: everything turns dazzling white before his eyes, he blindly groping gaze around the room, crushing a piece of paper in his hand, looks over two beds pushed together, like a year ago, and stops at his own reflection in the muddy, cold surface of the mirror.  
Steve looks in the mirror and breaks it with a cup.

_  
 _Steve wakes up to an alarm clock ringing trills, and tries to turn it off without opening his eyes, by touch; he misses the red button of that old device, and smacks it off the nightstand. Bucky winces in his sleep from the noise and rolls over on his side. Steve, nevertheless, has to open his eyes and get up. Sitting on the bed, he stretches to lift the alarm, and a photo that fell with it. Bucky brought it yesterday: Katherine, his former classmate, lives across the street, and once took a photo of them together and now gave the picture. Steve stares at a glossy surface, holding gently, to leave no trace; at the same time, he does and doesn't like the small photo: Bucky is very handsome on it, so handsome, it takes Steve's breath away when he looks, and he hugs Steve's shoulders, smiling happily at the camera, and Steve next to him is small and awkward, and it looks ridiculous. Yesterday Steve was careless enough to say about it and tried to remove it somewhere far away, in one of the old albums, and then Bucky declared that it's a great picture, and he will hang it on the wall, or not, he'll be wearing it with him, always put in his breast pocket, got it, Rogers, stop talk nonsense._  
 _Steve sighs, puts the photo away and is going to get out of bed, but gets hugged him from behind and pulled over._  
 _"Where are you going?" mumbles Bucky and buries his face in Steve's neck, "It's Sunday, remember?" lips tickling sensitive skin, and Steve, inaudible exhaling, presses tighter to the warm body._  
 _Outside - stuffy May, the soft rays of the sun through the curtains, the smell of lilacs and the distant laughter of children._  
A month later, Bucky Barnes goes to war.  


_  
Steve Rogers dies from a heart attack in July 1948, a day before his thirtieth birthday.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to point out all the mistakes and typos.  
> And please leave comments


End file.
